It is difficult to calculate the amount of good, which by this single means of intellectual improvement, may have been imparted to a considerable number of inquiring minds, or the degree of stimulus it may have given to rational and ennobling pursuits: yet public instruction must always be deemed subservient to private study, which can only be prosecuted by means of reading, observation, and experiment. These means the second department of the institution is designed to afford; and to this end its surplus revenues, after payment of all necessary expences, are strictly dedicated. The library was indeed originally composed only of the most valuable scientific works, but has latterly been extended to history, biography, voyages, and travels, poetry, and general literature, and already comprises more than a thousand volumes of unexceptionable character, besides all the most popular and esteemed periodicals of the day. The collection of philosophical apparatus has hitherto been of the slowest growth, but has lately received considerable accession from handsome individual donations, and makes a very respectable exhibition at the annual meeting. The institution room, with all the foregoing appendages, is open to the members every evening (except during lecture and class meetings) for reading and occasional conversation, or philosophical investigation; and thus affords a daily source of rational improvement and enjoyment to the lover of learning.

The third or class department of the institution is, if possible, attended with still greater advantages than either of the fore-going. The reading room was no sooner opened, than various topics of conversation and discussion naturally arose among the attending members, who soon discovered the propriety of setting apart one evening in each week for a regular debate, in order to secure the greatest mutual benefit from a free interchange of ideas and sentiments, in the investigation of philosophical truth, with the least possible interruption to the reader's studies. Such is the origin of the debating class, which has during a series of years continued to assemble at the institution room every Thursday evening, has called forth and exercised the talents of aspiring youth, and has latterly afforded the most powerful attraction to new members. The questions for debate are carefully selected by a committee appointed for the purpose; and the animated discussions which frequently arise, make very many of all ages and

both sexes eager to partake of this weekly "feast of reason and flow of soul." The attendance has indeed, latterly so overflowed as to make a larger room absolutely necessary for their accomodation; which want, the committee will take the earliest possible opportunity of supplying. For the further purpose of mutual instruction in such departments of science and literature, as are less adapted for actual debate, and of training junior members to become future lecturers to the institution, a lecturing class has lately been formed, which meets on the alternate Tuesday evening (not occupied by a public lecture) and has been favoured with some most interesting elementary lectures from a few members of the Philomathic society and others, but has not yet met with that permanent support, which it so justly demands and deserves. It will be a disgrace to the junior members of the institution, if this class be suffered to fall into decay. Other classes of a more private nature, for the in struction of junior members in mathematics, language, &c. havefrom time to time been formed. The mathematical class was attended with considerable success for several years, was discontinued for a few years, and is now revived; but owing probably to local circumstances has not yet attained to its pristine consistency.

Such is a faint outline of the objects and advantages of this excellent institution, which, after experiencing the vicissitudes of a ten years, probation, and encountering many untoward prejudices and reverses, is now rising in renewed vigor, and promising to more than fulfil the original expectations of its founders. Our vessel was launched at a period of great commercial excitement, amid the cheers of multitudes, who crowded into her on that joyous occasion; she has since encountered storms from without, and desertion from within, until she well nigh foundered on the shoals of insolvency; she is now, however, retrimmed and remanned for a new and more prosperous voyage, and bids defiance to the wars of elements, which have hitherto retarded her triumphant progress over the boundless seas and fathomless depths of knowledge. May your magazine be the compass, and truth the polar star of her onward course!

DEMOPHILUS.

PRINTED BY J. FLETCHER, UPPER HAYMARKET, NORWICH.

It was a bright and bracing morning in the western worldalmost the first which had gladdened the year. The rays of the sun, after having for a time struggled scantily through the mist which had gathered round the Onslaw Hills, had at length succeeded in dispersing it, and were now shining cheerily on pampa and prairie beneath. Not even the warmth and beauty of reviving spring, however, was enough to tempt from the fire-side an old man, whose frame was bowed and head whitened by the sorrows of three-score summers. Though nature's winter had passed away from the face of things, the winter of age was still creeping over his spirit, and benumbing his faculties; and soon, it appeared evident, in the natural tide of events, his sun must set. Yet now there was an unusual light in his eye, and he was gazing with a fixed earnestness upon a youth sitting beside him. It was his only son, who, having just completed his term at Yale College, had now returned to spend the vacation with his aged parent.

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My son," said the old man, after a silence which each appeared to have been waiting for the other to break, "thou wert wont to tell me how bright thy career seemed in prospect: have all thy golden hopes been realized? Lurked there no thorn beneath the flowers which strewed thy path? Were thy fellows such as thou didst hope to find them?" "It was even so," returned the generous youth struggling by the native energy of his mind to shape himself into the future man. His eye steadily fixed upon

young man.

"I have seen the

K

one object, he has turned not aside from pursuing it; but by patient perseverance has surmounted every obstacle to its attainment, and all his hopes have been crowned with success. IIis heart, too, has been a fountain of ever-flowing kindness; unrivalled in purpose and in deed of benevolence, friend and foe have alike shared his labour and his love."

In

"But, in solitude-hast thou marked no change there? society it might be the love of man's approbation which impelled him to a virtuous course:-but, when all-unconscious of being within the range of human vision, hast thou, unseen and unsuspected, looked upon him then?"

"I have, my father! and, when the toils of the day have been over, in the depth and stillness of some solitary shade, have heard him hold a hallowed and heart-felt communion with the God of his mercies."

"But, when passion has usurped the sway of his soul, has it not driven reason from the helm?"

"I refer you to an incident of late occurrence. Barton and Lewellyn were class-mates; of similar tastes and dispositions, they contracted an acquaintance which soon ripened into an ardent friendship, and they became noted throughout the college for the warmth of their attachment. Barton saw Maria, and seeing, he loved her. He thought the regard was mutual, and avowed his passion. He was mistaken; her heart was set upon Lewellyn. Was reason driven from the helm when he resigned her to his friend? If she was, she but gave place to that ennobling magnanimity of soul which consecrates the character in which it is found.

a cloud o'ercasts thy brow, my father, say whence it is.”

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But

My own younger days," replied the sire, "were present to my imagination, when like thee I saw nothing before me but brightness and beauty. Mournful experience, alas! has convinced me that the most beautiful visions are the most transient too, and that the fairest flowers fade the first. "Arnold was the tears flow apace to his remembrance his virtues.

companion of my youth:-even now my memory, and my heart bleeds as I recal to The degenerate spirits of your own

1 Arnold was a member of the senior class at Yale College, in the United States. He was cut off in the bloom of youth by consumption; and his justly-lamented death was commemorated by N. P. Willis, in a copy of verses, from which the stanza we have quoted is an extract, and which were inserted in an American journal of the day.

day could not compare with Arnold.

He bore away all the

honours of his year almost without an effort; and yet it was only the evening before his examination that he walked two miles to bestow his purse and pity on a poor family. But he was a flower too fragrant for this stormy shore, and in his youth he died. We gathered to our place of prayer to commit his ashes to their kindred dust. Our ranks were full, but one among us

slept the sleep of death.

'We reckon'd it in days, since he

Strode up that foot-worn aisle,
With his dark eye flashing gloriously,
And his lip wreathed with a smile.

O had it been but told us then,

To mark whose lamp was dim,

From out that rank of fresh-lipped men

Should we have singled him?'

"Yet he was on his bier, and we were met to bury our dead out of our sight. Deem it not weakness that we wept: 't was manliness to be heart-broken then,

Youth!-age of the careless heart, and bounding footstep, and roving eye-thou art still mine own; thou art still rolling the golden tide of hope at my feet. The sky above is all beaming and blue-over the waters beneath a soft calm is spread-the breeze is swelling the canvass of my little bark, and all is fair and inviting. But they tell me a tempest will lower, to cloud the heavens, and disturb the sea, and perchance shatter my frail vessel. Be it so be it so. My hopes shall not be bounded by

the narrow compass of three-score years and ten. I will look

beyond the tomb-I will set my heart on the world where sorrow and sin cannot enter; on whose "fadeless bloom" death cannot breathe—I will have my anchorage within the veil. And then shall I defy the storm which may gather round my head when the age of hope shall be gone by, and I shall cease to subscribe myself

NEANIAS.